Bow (music)
In music, a bow (/boʊ/) is a tensioned stick which has hair (usually horse-tail hair) coated in rosin (to facilitate friction) affixed to it. It is moved across some part (generally some type of strings) of a musical instrument to cause vibration, which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, and bass, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones.
This article is about the bow used to play a string instrument. For the musical instrument called "bow", see musical bow.History[edit]
Origin[edit]
The question of when and where the bow was invented is of interest because the technique of using it to produce sound on a stringed instrument has led to many important historical and regional developments in music, as well as the variety of instruments used.
Pictorial and sculptural evidence from early Egyptian, Indian, Hellenic, and Anatolian civilizations indicate that plucked stringed instruments existed long before the technique of bowing developed. In spite of the ancient origins of the bow and arrow, it would appear that bowed string instruments only developed during a comparatively recent period.
The Chinese yazheng is a zither played with a bow. The earliest Chinese source of the pipe zither yazheng, bowed with a stick, is from the 8th century. The use of rubbing sticks in Central Asia seems to be older. Presumably this playing technique was first used in lutes in Sogdiana around the 6th century, from where it reached China.[7]
Eric Halfpenny, writing in the 1988 Encyclopædia Britannica, says, "bowing can be traced as far back as the Islamic civilization of the 10th century ... it seems likely that the principle of bowing originated among the nomadic horse riding cultures of Central Asia, whence it spread quickly through Islam and the East, so that by 1000 it had almost simultaneously reached China, Java, North Africa, the Near East and Balkans, and Europe."[8] Halfpenny notes that in many Eurasian languages the word for "bridge" etymologically means "horse," and that the Chinese regarded their own bowed instruments (huqin) as having originated with the "barbarians" of Central Asia.
The Central Asian theory is endorsed by Werner Bachmann, writing in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Bachmann notes evidence from a 10th-century Central Asian wall painting for bowed instruments in what is now the city of Kurbanshaid in Tajikistan.
Circumstantial evidence also supports the Central Asian theory. All the elements that were necessary for the invention of the bow were probably present among the Central Asian horse riding peoples at the same time:
Maintenance[edit]
Careful owners always loosen the hair on a bow before putting it away. James McKean recommends that the owner "loosen the hair completely, then bring it back just a single turn of the button." The goal is to "keep the hair even but allow the bow to relax."[5] Over-tightening the bow, however, can also be damaging to the stick and cause it to break.[20]
Since hairs may break in service, bows must be periodically rehaired, an operation usually performed by professional bow makers rather than by the instrument owner.
Bows sometimes lose their correct camber (see above), and are recambered using the same heating method as is used in the original manufacture.
Lastly, the grip or winding of the bow must occasionally be replaced to maintain a good grip and protect the wood.
These repairs are usually left to professionals, as the head of the bow is extremely fragile, and a poor rehair, or a broken ivory plate on the tip, can lead to ruining the bow.
Nomenclature[edit]
In vernacular speech, the bow is occasionally called a fiddlestick. Bows for particular instruments are often designated as such: violin bow, cello bow, and so on.
Sources
Notes